(S29) Ultimus Week

[J0EB]

Code:

6. Write 800 words or more on something about anything in the league that interests you. It could be related to statistics, a league issue that you take seriously, or a niche part of history that doesn’t fit neatly into either of the above categories. This must be directly related to the league, so don’t wax 800 words about your team’s participation on a Werewolf server or something.

This year I was thinking about it and I really, really, didn't want to do Ultimus Week. The tasks have gotten so repetitive, and I've written about all the interesting ones already, and I can't exactly redo them. At this point, I've been in the league for over a year, and I've done 7 seasons of Ultimus weeks (this will be my 8th). So it makes sense that it would get a bit repetitive, but I wanted to take a deeper look into everything including but not limited to, how the UW tasks have changed over the years, how the formatting changed between S21 and S22, how my previous responses themselves may have been repetitive, and maybe even talk a little about how we can change UW to give opportunities for more creative responses each year. This isn't meant as a criticism to the PT team, but rather as an observation I've had and a feeling (more than likely) shared between users/vets of the league who have done 5+ of these by now. Thanks for reading and I hope that this can help inspire positive change.

The first UW I did was the last of the old school style that a lot of users probably wouldn't recognize at all. For reference to those who need it, here it is. For those who don't want to open their 12th sim league tab, back in the day, you could do 4 tasks for the UW, and they were all worth 2.5 TPE each. There was no variation in word count or TPE worth. There were 20 prompts, and they cycled throughout the years to add a bit of refreshment to them too. Since it was my first year in the league, these prompts were all pretty appealing and interesting to me.

After that year though, in S22, the PT team made big changes to the way UW worked. Instead of each prompt being worth 2.5 points and having the same word limit set at 200 words, there were longer length prompts worth more TPE each. Long tasks (800+ words) worth 10 TPE and Short Form Tasks (400+ words) worth 5 each. Personally (and I think the majority of users will agree with this sentiment), I think that this was an awesome change to the way UW worked, as it allows users to really hone in on a topic and get creative if they want to write for a 5 or 10 TPE prompt. I think encouraging longer writing is always a good thing for the league to do because the in-depth story telling in the league can be so much fun.

An important part of Ultimus week regardless of the formatting, is the prompts that users are given to work with. This is my main gripe with current day UW, and since I don't like to just spout complaints with no backing, I've done some analysis on the different prompts available each year.

To do this, I'm going to look at 3 factors, the number of prompts, the number of unique prompts compared to the previous year, and the number of entirely unique prompts (meaning never been used before starting from S22). I think this will give us a good idea as to how the UW prompts might cycle year after year, and show us how many new prompts have been created since S22.



So, what can we make of this? It seems like new prompts were slowly being added each year, but starting in S26, there was a wave of unique prompts introduced. This was really nice to see as the new prompts obviously gave users more creative ways to respond to UW and earn their TPE. After this huge refreshment, in S27 only a few new prompts were added. This makes sense since a lot of those prompts were still unique to some, I don't think every year there needs to be 15+ new prompts, so mixing a few newer ones in along with those added the previous year was a good mix of new and old (which were still relatively new).  In S28, we got more new Written and Graphic Prompts, and 2 new Short Form prompts which again were good additions to keep things fresh and cycling through.

While for the most part the PT team has been doing a good job adding new prompts to UW. The issue that I see, is two-fold. First, there hasn't been a new Long Form prompt in 3 seasons (and there have only been 3 new Short Forms), and second, there was only 1 new prompt introduced this year.

Adding new long prompts whether Long or Short Form is still important. Being able to do 2 tasks for 5 TPE is (in my opinion) the perfect median to use for UW. I really wish there were more of the longer prompts so that users could use their creative minds more and get to those in-depth stories that I mentioned earlier. Obviously the write about anything that interests you prompt is still present which is awesome, but sometimes the guidance of the prompts can be really helpful too.

As for the lack of new prompts this season, honestly I'm not sure why this was the case. Perhaps the PT team couldn't think of good new prompts, perhaps they didn't even consider adding new ones, I don't know. But I think that I speak for most people when I say that UW can be really frustrating to do sometimes when the prompts all feel the same.

So, what do I think the solution is? Well I think UW is in need of another refreshment like what we saw in S26. Adding another big set of new prompts (focusing on Long and Short Form prompts too) would really remove some of the existing repetitiveness. After that's done, we can add a few at a time until things get stale again (2-3 seasons) and then have another big new set added. I think a cycle like this would be really healthy for the users of the league and encourage further engagement in the UW year after year.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, I have at least one idea for how to help come up with prompts, but I'm running short on time to submit this for TPE so I'm going to wait until I have a few more ideas and submit a follow up media piece (to not be graded).